22/10/2018

10 Ways to Deal with Negative or Difficult People


I love her to death, but it's draining to talk to her.

 Every time I call this friend of mine, I know what I'm in for: a half-hour rant about everything that's difficult, miserable, or unfair.

 Sometimes she focuses on the people she feels have wronged her, and other times she explores the general hopelessness of life. She never calls to see how I’m doing, and she rarely listens to what’s going on in my life for more than a minute before shifting the focus back to herself.

 I tell myself I call because I care, but sometimes I wonder if I have ulterior motives–to pump up my ego offering good advice or even to feel better about my own reality.

 I'm no saint, and if there's one thing I know well, it's that we only do things repeatedly if we believe there's something in it for us. Even if that something is just to feel needed.

 I thought about this the other day when a reader wrote to me with an interesting question: “How do you offer compassion to someone who doesn't seem to deserve it?”

 While I believe everyone deserves compassion, I understand what she meant after reading more. She went on to describe her offensive, sexist, racist boss who emotionally exhausts everyone around him. He sounds a lot more hateful than my friend, who is, sadly, just terribly depressed.

 But these people have one thing in common: boundless negative energy that ends up affecting everyone around them.

 So today I started thinking about how we interact with negative or difficult people. People who seem chronically critical, belligerent, indignant, angry, or just plain rude.

 When someone repeatedly drains everyone around them, how do you maintain a sense of compassion without getting sucked into their doom? And how do you act in a way that doesn't reinforce their negativity–and maybe even helps them?

 read more

 related:
Is the Glass or Half-full or Half-empty?
Posted by at
Labels: , ,